Great Lakes Spotlight: The Unrelated Segments - Where You Gonna Go?/It's Gonna Rain

After a little holiday merriment we return today to start our next regional Battle of the Garage Bands. We just crowned The Bad Roads as the winner of the hotly contested South Region. The Enfields took a close battle in The Mid-Atlantic Region, The Blues Magoos took New York and The Squires took New England. Now we turn to The Great Lakes, a real hot-bed of Garage rock in the 60s, so we expect the next 10 days to be chock-full-O-crispy good rock.

The Unrelated Segments - Where You Gonna Go? by On The Flip-Side on Mixcloud

The Unrelated Segments - It's Gonna Rain by On The Flip-Side on Mixcloud

We start the two-week run at the Great Lakes with Michigan's The Unreleated Segments!

The Unrelated Segments made three singles and they all kick some serious booty. They sound a little different than the work of other garage bands of their day, a little more ambitious, a little more polished, a little more accomplished, a little more serious.

The band was formed in Taylor, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, in late 1966. The band was Ron Stults on vocals, Rory Mack on lead guitar, Barry Van Engelen on bass, John Torok on rhythm guitar and Andy Angellotti on drums. Before they had even a single concert, only two weeks after their first jam session, the High School boys went into the studio to record their first record in early 1967, Story Of My Life/It's Not Fair, released on Hannah-Barbera Records. Both numbers written by Rory Mack and Ron Stults. 

Today, we're going to listen to their second single, Where You Gonna Go?/It's Gonna Rain as released on Liberty Records in September of 1967. Both numbers, again, written by Mack and Stults.

Where You Gonna Go? opens with a crazy cool guitar riff that sounds like it might be run through a Leslie speaker. Van Engelen then joins the fray with some brilliant bass work before the creaking sound of a flexi mic stand gives way to Stults who sings of the bleak reality of working all day for another man, smoking cigarettes just for something to do and falling further and further behind the American Dream. The ever so brief bridge at 1:30 is an unexpected gem that really lifts the song at just the right time. The relentless guitar riff now gives way to a swinging romp:

And you know you're selling out
And as anybody knows
They'll know it by your face
And know it by your clothes

It's Gonna Rain is even more bleak. A slow, somber number that, again, features a nice chord progression and stellar bass work. Without question, the pairing of the upbeat A-Side and the somber Flip-Side make this one top notch garage record. 

Until next time, we'll see you On The Flip-Side!